TIM: She was probably in love with love and he was its first representative. MRS. MARTINEAU: And when the romance wore off there was fifty thousand a year left. TIM: I don’t think that is a very nice thing to say. MRS. MARTINEAU: How you adore her. TIM: Everyone does. SELINA: Ninian, have you ever thought of becoming a Mayor? NINIAN: Mayor? Mayor of what? SELINA: It wouldn’t matter. Any town would do. Papa, wouldn’t Ninian make an excellent Mayor? LORD WILLIAM: I really can’t say, my dear. I’ve never seen one. SELINA: Ann knows lots. She adores them. MOLYNEUX: In that case it would be quite proper that her husband should join the company. LADY EMILY: Ann, how silent you are. ANN: I was always the most silent of the Cathcarts, but even that is enough to get me the reputation of a chatterbox outside the family circle. NINIAN: Uncle William, I am very glad you should be here, as I am thinking of starting a league for combating budding Bolshevism in this country. Your active help would be invaluable to me. LORD WILLIAM: Molly and I are too old to see red. MOLYNEUX: And being autocrats ourselves we approve of Lenin. LORD WILLIAM: I suppose you feel bound to fight the only people who hate liberty more than you do. NINIAN: I don’t understand. Education is at the bottom of all the mischief; teaches the people discontent and damned little else. What does a working-man need to know except how to do an honest day’s work and watch his cricket or his football on a Saturday? As a landlord I regard my tenants as my children, and I know them well enough to know that good old English ale and good old English sport mean a damned sight more to them than cheap editions of the classics. Being educated above their station, that’s what they are. TIM: That would not teach them much. NINIAN: I don’t know what you mean. SELINA: I have often heard you say yourself, Ninian, that the only thing a gentleman need learn is how to play the game—which, by the way, he ought to be born knowing. TIM: In case of accidents there’s Eton. NINIAN: Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. SELINA: But _Hamlet_ wasn’t written there. LORD WILLIAM: I always find it so difficult to write out of doors. However still the day, there’s always enough breeze to blow the paper about. NINIAN: I don’t see what that has to do with education. MRS. MARTINEAU: It all comes from your anti-Bolshevist League. ANN: Don’t let’s talk politics. SELINA: I am going to write a song for Ninian to sing with the refrain: “I’m a red rag to the Reds, so we’re all of us red together.” It will be called the Red Pottage. LORD WILLIAM: Selina, don’t you think you could write a revue? Then Molly and I could get off some of our vulgarer jokes. SELINA: What a good idea! Then, when you want to say something really outrageous, you need only make a note of it, and we will use it in _Whispers_. MRS. MARTINEAU: What do you say, Selina?